Sunday 29th May 2011

It's that line other people have written about, spoken about in many a therapy session, I’m sure. That line that’s a tightrope, the edge of an abyss, a cliff, the river below raging, one's existence irrelevant in its flow.

This morning I woke up and asked my angel to embrace me, and take me back to sleep. It was too early, there were too many thoughts lurking, waiting for airtime, waiting for their place to occupy and energise in the mess of the mind.  Sleep approached, that delicious feeling, the surge and cocoon of those chemicals, the precursor to slumber, but they didn’t subside, didn’t settle in and take me to some other reality of dreams which may be neither here, nor there.

I thought of the man I’d recently had breakfast with, and how I could contact him today and suggest a coffee, a beach stroll/loll, a drink, even though I don’t drink these days. And then I thought of a glass of deep, earthy red, a fulsome Shiraz or Cabernet and how that would be nice, how that might even be nice for breakfast. Like those days long ago when I would wake up and resolve to have nothing to do with the world, no contact with humanity and proceed to smoke a joint all to myself and settle into the delicious high, hidden and veiled, anonymous and unavailable, how easy that was, how it soothed me.

But I am in my friends’ spare bedroom this morning, their five year old daughter goofing around, screeching and blaring inanities, and yes she’s loveable and a precious little thing, but on the edge of this line I am so quiet, and so needy, so hungry, that I don’t have it to give her.

I miss my flat, my eagle’s nest with my books and art and things, my kitchen full of delicious comfort and my sewing machine and fabrics. I don’t know what happened, how I uprooted like that, how I ripped it all up and landed here, without a plan, without a trace. People keep asking where I live and my answer comes out that I’m a nomad, looking for a home, spoilt for choice. I think I’m breaking all the rules, all the sensible lines of what I should be doing, doing to create: a life, abundance, a relationship. Perhaps my life has been a series of misguided decisions – like giving up my apartment in a gesture of welcoming another in – it was a house-for-one, and I thought I could affect the alchemy of life by stepping out of that nest and making myself available. 

My flat in South Yarra

This line, this edge, is so weary, so overused. Deep footprints worn into the grey rock, scuffed into the viewing platform where many before and after me have contemplated the jump, only to wearily turn back to their tired lives, deep breath in as we approach yet another excavation.

“Don’t you learn anything from the work you teach?” someone asked me yesterday. Deep transformational processing and This is where I land, This is where I hesitantly stand.

Lets face it. I’m not doing well. The astrologer said to wait until mid-July, that it’s a terrible time up until then and nothing would be clear until earliest mid June. Even here in the Shire, I feel like I do not belong. My psychologist friend says she and I share the pattern of estrangement, a perception of never belonging. Last night, surrounded by people, who mainly talk about themselves, I felt alone, disconnected, unbelonging.

Today, I feel tired, a bit more uplifted after writing, a bit more able to connect. But I still miss my flat, my privacy, and the touch of a beloved who wants me. 

Wollumbin, Rainmaker, from McAuley's Lane, Myocum